New...uhm…Job

Yesterday I was woken up by a phone call with an offer for a part-time job: Associate Producer of a science podcast. They actually offered me a similar pay to what my first job was straight out of college! This may seem like a step backward, but it feels like progress after a summer of making $25 a day. Also, I took it as a sign that I’m finally trained enough to be a professional journalist. (Can you smell the new job optimism? Surely, this won’t last.) On my first day, I spent 9 hours editing audio for the podcast, which was actually quite fun. Editing audio is a strange activity. It uses some parts of the brain that you use for editing print--you have to think about what the people are saying and keep their content intact--but it also feels a bit like needle-point or some other crafty, fine-handiwork thing. You get into a groove in which you become a physical extension of the keyboard-mouse-software system. You develop shortcut moves, reflexes almost. You hear a sound, deal out a series of strokes, and then the sound is improved. After trimming and cleaning up different tracks, I spent most of the day removing people’s uhms and ers and repeat mumbles. Now they all sound like polished spin doctors of science. By all means, have a listen: Go to the New Scientist podcast website and download today’s show.

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